Dönitz: The Last Führer (72 page)

After the capitulation Dönitz had no idea of what the allies intended doing with him and the ‘government’ he had assembled from former ministers; his uncertainty was reflected in his last speech to the German people on May 8th, in which he announced the unconditional surrender and urged everyone to face the difficult times ahead with ‘dignity, courage and discipline’.
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Already, however, his guidelines were clear; they were to distance himself and his administration from the crimes of the Nazi Party, to represent the Germany services as having fought heroically with no stain on their honour, their leaders as unpolitical soldiers who had simply done their duty. Preparations on these lines had been underway for months in the various services; incriminating documents had been weeded, although not always very efficiently because of the difficult conditions.

As a part of the show, on May 6th dismissal notices had been drawn up for the most notorious Nazi leaders, including Goebbels—whose suicide with his wife in Berlin after her macabre murder of their five children in the bunker was not yet known. Himmler was the most difficult case; his forces had been an integral part of the recent fight against internal chaos, and probably Dönitz felt he owed him loyalty from their relationship in better days. At all events he received him at 5.00 in the afternoon of the 6th to give him the news personally that he was stripped of all his offices.

There can be little doubt that Himmler was prepared for this, and that the two men had made previous preparations, for a large number of the SS officers gathered around the
Reichsführer
at Flensburg were soon, if not already, furnished with papers as naval petty officers or ratings and the uniforms to go with them. When Himmler, apparently in the best of humour—and it must be assumed that this was after his meeting with Dönitz—gave them their last order to ‘dive for cover in the
Wehrmacht
’
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they lost no time in doing so. One was Rudolf Höss, the notorious Commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp; he became boatswain’s mate Franz Lang with orders to report to the Navy Intelligence School on Sylt;
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the rest of his section also ‘dived’ into the
Kriegsmarine
. It is inconceivable that this could have happened without Dönitz’s
knowledge and agreement—yet it was a risk. In view of the efforts that were to be devoted to clearing the Navy of complicity in the crimes of the Party one wonders whether this last service for the
Reichsführer
was done from loyalty to him and the Party he represented, or because he knew too much to be trifled with. In this connection Heinz Macher, chief of Himmler’s bodyguard, tells an intriguing story of a naval party sent to arrest his chief about this time:

Whether this was Dönitz’s idea, or that of his administration, attempting to distance themselves from the architect of the concentration camp atrocities, or whether it occurred earlier as a result of Hitler’s orders via von Greim and Hannah Reisch to liquidate Himmler for treachery, it would have been to the advantage of many if the
Reichsführer SS
had ‘disappeared’. As it turned out they need not have worried. In this ultimate crisis Himmler proved far from the ice-cool exemplar of Nordic virtues that Hitler had portrayed. He neither led his men in a last fight they had been expecting against the invading hordes of the ‘Jewish Capitalist’ and ‘Jewish Bolshevik’ conspiracy, nor, seeing the collapse of the ideals for which he had steeled himself to sacrifice so many millions of men, women and children, did he sacrifice himself; he shaved off his moustache, adopted a black eye-patch and a false name and wandered southwards with a few other high SS officers also in disguise. When eventually they walked into a security patrol he announced himself as Heinrich Himmler then, apparently upset by a question about Belsen concentration camp, bit on the phial he carried in his mouth and died a grotesquely protracted and humiliating death as his captors struggled to prevent him swallowing the poison.

Dönitz and the members of his administration showed up in little better light; the single exception was Albert Speer. His motives have been questioned, nevertheless he is the only one to have left any visible record of having understood the scale of the moral catastrophe and to be prepared to take his share of the responsibility.

The physical destruction of great parts of the nation and the financial and social disintegration were beyond description: William Shirer, arriving
in Berlin a few months later, found the city ‘destroyed almost beyond recognition’, the ‘conquering people who were so brutally arrogant and so blindly sure of their mission as the master race when I departed from here five years ago’, now ‘broken, dazed, shivering, hungry’ as they foraged among the ruins.
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Such was the physical plight of the people; only Speer, apparently, saw their moral plight, and the moral legacy they would leave to future generations of Germans. He was the only one to call for an administration not formed wholly of men tainted with the guilt of the regime and to offer his own resignation, the only one to be able to escape from the mental gaol of the Third Reich and see it from the outside.

Dönitz’s reaction could have been predicted from his career—
he
had not been wrong; Göring for his voluptuous life and gross failure with the
Luftwaffe
, Ribbentrop for his failure to understand either the British mind or foreign policy, Raeder for not building U-boats instead of battleships and, when he had built them, not building them fast enough—these were his favourite scapegoats. He himself had only followed the path of his soldier’s duty to the uttermost; furthermore, if he had had enough U-boats at the start, he
would have won
!

No doubt these were very human reactions to guilt and disaster, but they hardly matched the scale of events. The truth is that had he been of a stature to rise to the challenge now confronting Germany, he would not have been where he was, Hitler’s successor, nor of course would any of the members of his administration have kept their places or even probably their lives. Speer, again, was the exception. The contortions this powerless government now put itself through while the occupation authorities—concerned to restore some semblance of ordered life to the people—left them alone to hold daily conferences and write notes to one another in the schoolrooms at Mürwik were pitiable.

Here is the chief of the naval justice department, Eckhardt, in a memorandum on May 12th:

This was the bedrock of the government’s attitude to the occupying powers; as Jodl expressed it to his department on May 15th:

It is not so much the cynicism of these ‘guidelines’ issued by men who had consciously waged war against every system of law, national or international, moral or Christian, who had carefully weighed the disadvantages against the advantages of
publicly
leaving the Geneva Convention, not so much the lack of any feelings of guilt or shame—for of course they were creatures of an amoral society: it is the failure to learn that is terrifying. These are the ‘guidelines’ for a straight replay of 1919, 1920…. After the most devastating defeat in the history of nations, these men who had thrown overboard every principle for the sake of victory, whose only moral value was success, in overwhelming defeat
learnt nothing
!

It is only in the light of these ‘guidelines’ that much of what otherwise seems petty concern over rank insignia, the wearing of medals, saluting and flags, with which Jodl and Dönitz occupied themselves excessively, can be understood. It was a deliberate campaign designed to play up to the peculiar psychology of the victors, to project themselves as normal soldiers subject to the normal usages of international conventions, to separate themselves from the Party which had so obviously violated the
law, and so find grace and be accepted into partnership with the occupying powers
over the future of the Fatherland
—so ensuring the continuation of their ideal of the German State; for Dönitz this was National Socialism—no doubt without the grosser abuses—as in 1919 it had been the
Kaiserliches Reich
. It was for this reason he did not take the title of Führer; Jodl explained to his department: ‘In all discussions with the allies
Grossadmiral
Dönitz should be referred to as Supreme Commander of the
Wehrmacht
and not as Head of State.’
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Dönitz’s proclamations have to be interpreted in the same light; there was no more talk of the ‘spreading poison of Jewry’—although it had now presumably filled the land—no more references to eating earth rather than allowing his grandson to be brought up in the ‘Jewish spirit and filth’, no more calls for fanatical adherence to National Socialism, only a concern for honour, dignity and pride for what the
Wehrmacht
had achieved in five years of heroic struggle. ‘We have nothing to be ashamed of,’ he said in an order about the attitude to be adopted by soldiers to the occupying powers issued on May 11th, and rather than rushing to them: ‘…we have to allow our former enemies to come to us, then meet them with decency and courtesy.

‘We stand without a spot on our honour as soldiers and can with justice appear full of pride and honour.’
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Certainly any other advice would have meant giving way to despair; naturally he had to strive to preserve morale, and of course the shadow of 1918–19 hung over his every action. It is true, too, that he achieved his aim; a British Admiralty mission visiting Flensburg on May 21st-24th reported, ‘The German armed forces, both naval and military, appeared to be in good shape with good morale, and there was no visible sign of demoralization.’
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This was the impression received by countless others who visited the area; the morale of the U-boat arm appeared especially high. It was very different from 1919 and evidence that his methods of indoctrination, ruthless punishment and, on the other hand, untiring personal concern for his men had been effective. Nevertheless, he had not been faced with the same problems of idleness in the big ships; breakdowns in discipline had occurred before the capitulation and the men whom the allies saw were survivors, most of whom, probably, had hardly expected to survive; they had every reason to be thankful that it was over and they had ended in the western camp. Whatever the truth about this difficult question, there is no doubt that behind and between Dönitz’s carefully chosen words to preserve morale stood the clear aim
of separating the armed forces from the Party in the eyes of the occupying powers—a 180-degree turn from the course he had been pursuing for two and a half years!

The most urgent part of this task was to distance everyone from the atrocities in the concentration camps. The spirit in which this was attempted is conveyed in Jodl’s statement to his department on May 15th: ‘The
Grossadmiral
intends to issue an order in which he dissociates himself sharply from the outrages [
Auswüchsen
or, literally, ‘excrescences’] of the concentration camps.’
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Dönitz drew up the order the same day; it decreed that all persons who had contravened the laws and basic principles of justice and morality in the treatment of prisoners in the concentration camps were to be tried by The
Reich
court of justice and sentenced under the current disciplinary code. Von Krosigk, acting as his chief minister, sent this decree to Eisenhower with a covering letter asking him to allow the
Reich
court to be charged with this task. The German people, he wrote, had no knowledge of conditions in the camps since they were completely sealed to the outside world, and everything inside was carried on in the highest secrecy. ‘Even leading German personalities had no possibility of instructing themselves about the actual conditions …’ The German people ‘unanimously and indignantly repudiated the mistreatment and cruelties’ which were ‘simply incompatible with their fundamental principles and moral feelings’.
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